


Echo Echo

by Sholio



Category: The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-07-28 00:35:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16230536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: The Defenders, post-Snap.





	Echo Echo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alchemise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemise/gifts).



Matt Murdock doesn't believe in ghosts.

He particularly doesn't believe in ghosts when one of them is standing right in front of him trying to argue him out of jumping off a roof.

"Goddammit, Matt," Foggy says. He's just a voice, with no smell and none of the little rustles that people make even when they're standing still. And yet, there _is_ something there, something Matt can't quite fathom; it's not just empty air in front of him. "You're running yourself ragged. You're going to make stupid mistakes. Get off this roof and go have something to eat and more than an hour of sleep --"

"And a shower," Karen puts in from somewhere off to his right. " _Definitely_ a shower."

They aren't real. Ghosts are not part of Matt's worldview. Foggy and Karen's mortal remains are gritty dust under his fingertips, dust on a table in a bar he will never step into again (they'd just patched things up, they'd just made things _good_ ; as if he needed to be reminded there is no justice in the world). And their immortal souls have gone on to a deserved reward. Foggy and Karen were good people. They wouldn't be here, trapped in this hell of a city along with him.

Not-Foggy makes an exasperated noise. "You try. I'm getting nowhere here."

"I don't think we're going to get ..." Karen says, and that's as far as she goes before her voice has faded on the wind until he can no longer hear her.

"Damn it," Foggy says, " _Matt_ \--" and then he's silent too. Matt hesitates a long moment before reaching out a cautious hand and sweeping it through the air. It's not as if there should be anything to resist; there's nothing physical there anyway. There never is. But the lingering sense of _something_ is gone now.

They'll be back, though, whatever they are. They always come back. No amount of prayer or penance can keep them away.

"Fair" is a word Matt left behind in childhood. The world isn't fair; it never has been.

He pulls up his mask, wipes his eyes, then pulls it down again and steps off the roof, jumps to the next ledge down, and bounds across to the next rooftop. His legs burn with weariness, but he can still do this. It's only his heart that's broken, after all.

 

*

 

Luke Cage is a selfish bastard.

Misty knows that's not fair. Man didn't choose to die, after all. But she can't help it. Anger is what keeps her going. Right now she doesn't have much else. She's running on fumes, has been for weeks. What's left of the city's police force is stressed beyond its snapping point, but there's still more to do, always more to do. And the least he could do is stop coming back to remind her that he's not around to help.

And yet she's glad to see him, every time.

"Still there?" she says, glancing up to see Luke by the window, translucent in the city's sodium vapor glow. "No words of wisdom from beyond the veil? Damn it, I still don't know if I'm going nuts or not. But you look good, dead man."

Luke's low chuckle seems to rumble through her chest as she buckles on her shoulder holster. "You too, lady."

"Got any hot tips for me tonight, Ghost-man?" she asks. "You better not up and vanish, like you did the last time."

She glances over to see him shrug. "Not something I have control over." He looks down at his hand, turns it over and spreads the fingers. "Aww, shi --"

And he's gone, just like that.

"Trust a man," she says out loud. "Never there when there's work to be done." And she opens the door to the hallway outside.

She's not the hero Harlem needs, but right now, she's the only one it's got.

 

*

 

"It's not your fault, man. You didn't cause this."

"I know, Ward," Danny says, eyes closed, hands resting loosely on his knees, feet tucked up in the lotus position. He rarely sees them, but without opening his eyes, he can _hear_ them, sometimes even feel them. He can pretend it's real, that they're really there, and not ... wherever they are. Whatever they are.

Today is a good day; they're more _there_ than usual. He manages not to lean into it when Colleen's arms go lightly around his neck from behind, even when she presses a kiss to his cheek. Doing that often makes them disappear. So he just tries to relax and enjoy it, accept it: Colleen's phantom hug and the ghostly yet still somehow reassuring pressure of Ward's hand on his shoulder, squeezing lightly.

"You're going to be okay," Colleen tells him.

"I'm trying," he says.

He saw Ward die, on a mountainside in Nepal, crumbling and blowing away on the wind. He didn't see Colleen vanish -- she was nothing but a cheerful voice mail message, repeated over and over again as he tried and tried to call her between legs of a nightmare multi-day flight halfway around a world gone mad. He still fantasizes about finding her, somewhere out there in Chinatown working to save people, even though rationally he knows that if she was okay, if she was still here, he wouldn't have her ghost haunting him.

Or whatever they are. Ghosts, malign magic, figments of his imagination ... he doesn't really care, as long as he gets to talk to them now and then.

"How are you guys doing?" he asks.

"Still dead, thanks for asking," Ward says dryly. 

"Ward!" Colleen sounds scandalized.

"What? He asked. What am I supposed to say?"

"It's okay," Danny manages to whisper, keeping his eyes closed only with an effort. They still don't like each other much, his bickering, beloved ghosts, these two pieces of his heart. "I know better than to listen to anything Ward says."

"Hey!" Ward says, half-laughing.

Colleen laughs, and then her soft laugh fades, between one breath and the next, and they're gone. Danny opens wet eyes on an empty dojo.

He misses them like a part of himself has been cut away. He might survive the amputation, but he will never be the same again.

But thinking about it doesn't bring them back, no more than it brought back his parents. Wearily, he dashes at his eyes and reaches for his jacket. There is work to be done.

 

*

 

"I don't forgive you, you know," Jessica says.

"I know," Trish says, lacing up her boots.

Malcolm is a gentle ghost who appears to her only rarely. But Jessica _stalks_ her, dogging her steps on the street, sitting across from her in her living room. Jessica is railing and angry and spiteful and helpful, all rolled into one package. Jessica whispers words of fury into Trish's ear while also warning her if anyone tries to approach her from behind, and brings her tips of people trapped and injured, of muggers and looters and killers emboldened by the city's crisis, delivered in between half-drunken diatribes. Telling herself that Jessica is nothing more than grit on a city sidewalk doesn't help much when an all too real-seeming ghost of Jessica is yelling at her at 2 a.m., telling her to get herself up off the goddamn street and get to a hospital. (Her head still aches from last night and she needed six stitches across her scalp, but she nailed the bastard who blackjacked her first.)

"You're not ready to get back out there," Jessica says. "Gonna get yourself killed."

"Hey," Trish says, "at least I'll have a lot of company." And she pulls down her Hellcat mask and prepares to go out and save another little piece of this city, as much of it as she can, for as long as she can.


End file.
